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and NOT tie everything up in the courts?

Let's face it. Living together like Goldie and Kurt unmarried, forever would sort of keep a "stop loss" in place, wouldn't it? If you think there's a chance your loved one might move out tomorrow, won't you be on better behavior today? Mentally, you see their bags packed and sitting beside the door. It's not permanent, so it feels more like "company."

And besides, there's just something in human nature that when we're told we have to do something everyday for the rest of our lives, we immediately start feeling bored and trapped! It's like saying to a fourteen-year-old, "you have four years of high school, then after that, four more years of college!" No wonder the drop-out rate is so high.

And who, pray tell, came up with "till death do us part?" I know the Bible says God hates divorce, but it also says He hates lying and cheating and murdering, and a whole host of other things that we haven't gotten down just right. Seems to me the idea is to keep trying to improve!

Maybe the balance is that we should marry someone with the idea that, "We're going to try to make this work, but we're going to review it every year or two. We'll make corrections if we need to, and if the contract is still useful, we will renew it. Otherwise, the deal is off, no harm, no fowl."

"But what about us?" Liam will ask. And I'll stare at the pool of tears in his big, blue eyes. I'll think about how their dad disappeared from their lives, and now they get to borrow someone else's dad. I'll suddenly know in my heart that lots of people have sucked up their own misery just so they'd never have to see "forever" disappear from their child's eyes.

"Don't worry, Darlings," I'll say. "We'll be together forever, to have and to hold from this day forward, for richer or poorer, through sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live."

Learn more about this author, Jerri Akins.
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